Tag Archives: A Sense of Mission

November 1989, When the World Changed

In November, 1989, I was a planner for a regional commission in North Georgia. After years if dull jobs, I thought I had found my calling, work I enjoyed. I had laid aside my earlier dreams of finding an international job, one that would take me to other countries.

That autumn, I and most of the world watched, incredulous, as one Eastern European country after another threw off Soviet rule. The old longing returned. I wanted another job, somewhere in the middle of all those global changes. Silly daydreaming. No hope of that, of course.

A year later I prepared to leave for my job in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, after finishing my orientation as a U.S. Foreign Service officer.

The year 1989 often appears in my novels, stamping the place of that momentous year for me and for the world. From A SENSE OF MISSION:

That fall the world changed.

From our peaceful island, as we stacked wood for winter, cooked apples into applesauce, and noted the sun rising ever further south, we watched the slow liberation movement that swept across Eastern Europe. We held our breath, for at first it looked to end as tragically as Tiananmen Square.

It did not. The prayed-for change materialized. The Berlin Wall fell without bloodshed. For good or for ill, Eastern Europe began meshing with the West.

This month, Germans celebrate the day the Wall fell, twenty-six years ago. This is the Germany that so many of those Middle Eastern, African, and Asian refugees defy death to reach today.

A Left-Handed Christian in the Religiously Right-Handed World

A Sense of MissionI have difficulty pinpointing where the ideas for my stories come from. A Sense of Mission, my favorite, is the only one written in first person.

At one point, Kaitlin, the main character, says “I felt as if I were a left-handed Christian in the world of the religiously right-handed.”

Maybe that was the germ for the story. I often feel like a left-handed Christian. I suppose most of us, Christian or not, feel out of synch with the drummer at times. For one thing, I’m too serious. My mother was always encouraging me to “get out and have some fun.” To this day, “getting out” requires effort. Sometimes I should exert the effort. Too easy for a writer to stay stuck in solitude.

But sometimes solitude is what I need. I no longer apologize for that. The choice is not cut and dried. Whether we crave solitude or the next party, we strive for the right balance.

Kaitlin, whose life circumstances were far different from mine, found her way. She took wrong turns, for all the best reasons, but finally discovered how to live as she was meant to live.

I doubt any of us has a perfect life, though some seem more blessed than others. Regardless, write with the hand given you.

 

Enjoying the Good Times, a Faith Thing

 “I fancy I still hear the call to prayer from the mosque beside the U.S. embassy compound, though I’m a grown woman now.”

So begins the week that will change the life of nine-year-old Kaitlin Sadler in A Sense of Mission. So far, it is the only novel I have written that came to me in first person.

Kaitlin was not me. I did not experience her type of childhood. I certainly didn’t lose my parents at the age of nine in a terrorist attack.

I think her story came to me while I tried to deal with the realization that good times, like all times in this life, will end. We are, so they say, the only creatures who know we will die.

Joshua, a family friend, asks the teenage Kaitlin, “Is it because of your parents that you always expect bad news?”

“Good times never last,” Kaitlin says.

The friend replies, “True. Neither do bad times.”

Kaitlin explains that enjoying the good times is like feasting at a banquet when some monster from Lord of the Rings stares at you through a half open door.” She asks, “You think it takes faith to enjoy good times?”

Joshua considers and replies in the affirmative “especially for those who’ve gone through suffering.”

When we suffer, we decide which road to take. If we decide to enter life again, to open ourselves to the possibility of joy, it remains a faith thing until we find our way in better times.

 

Father, Dad, Mother, Mom

 

Our names for our parents or parent figures, the first adults we meet on coming into this world, tell a great deal about us: culture, age, status, and of course relationship with the parents.

I called my father “Daddy.” I never remember using “Dad.” I think this reflects my Southern heritage. I called my mother “Mom” most of the time, though occasionally my brother and I in talking of her would use the more affectionate Southern term “Mama.”

The parental terms used by the characters in my stories mirror these characteristics. In A Sense of Mission, Ethan, raised by elite New England parents, calls his father “Dad,” never “Daddy.” His mother he calls “Mother.” His aunt, brought up in an even more traditional atmosphere, called her parents “Mother” and “Father.”

Ethan’s son Brendan, reflecting their more intimate status, calls Ethan “Daddy” until he reaches a certain age, then calls him “Dad.”

Byron, the abused son in Quiet Deception, calls his father “Pop,” reflecting both ridicule and his social status.

Our names for the ones with whom we begin our lives mirror the affection (or lack of) that we first learn from them.

Villains and Choices

 

My stories have villains, of course. I won a blog contest for best betrayal of a villain in my book Singing in Babylon. While portraying the villain’s evil intentions, I attempted to trace the reasons for his choice of evil. The villain chose unwisely after a wrong done to his family. A commendable trait, loyalty to family, became evil through the way he dealt with it.

Sometimes the villain is internal. Kaitlin Sadler’s early life was torn apart by tragedy in A Sense of Mission. Though she finds healing within the love of those around her, she struggles through the next few years with the inability to enjoy life to the fullest, sapped by the fear of evil that seems stronger than life. Kaitlin finally chooses to sacrifice fear for faith when she risks a new calling.

Fiction allows us to wrestle with evil through the lives of characters caught in its grip. The greatest stories give us hope that evil can be defeated through good. The recent movie version of Les Miserables depicts the thief, Jean Valjean, forever changed through one act of kindness. The kindness required sacrifice on the part of the benefactor. To turn evil to good may require such sacrifice, a giving up of possessions or of some part of the self.

Algeria In the News Again

 

Following is a quote from my novel, A SENSE OF MISSION. The heroine, Kaitlin Sadler, is working at the U.S. Embassy in Algiers, Algeria, in 1993:

Bruce came in one morning while I was scanning the morning’s French and Arab newspapers . . .  He showed me the piece of paper, printed in Arabic. “Gabir brought this in. Seems the FIS is circulating it throughout Algiers.”

I read it. “They want all foreigners out of Algeria within 30 days or they’re vowing to—the word is exterminate, I believe—exterminate the foreigners, I mean.”

I handed it back. “I presume they’re particularly interested in the oil company workers.”

“They’d like to shut down the oil industry here. Oil is the main revenue source for the government they hope to topple.”

“And set up an Islamist government on the model of Iran, I suppose.”

The story is fictitious. However, the events mirror the Algeria where I worked in the latter part of 1993. The words hint of today’s headlines about the taking of oil workers as hostages, including Americans, by extremists.

Kaitlin is introduced to Algiers through her sponsor, Adele, when she first arrives. Her observations suggest one reason for the growth of the insurgent groups that began terrorizing Algeria in the 1990’s, when I was there, and continue today.

“They’re called ‘wall-holders,’” Adele said as we crawled through the neighborhoods of Algiers in her car. I had remarked on the young men who stood around, seemingly with nothing to do.

“I knew the unemployment rate was high,” I said, “but I guess I didn’t know it had affected the youth that much.”

“The official unemployment rate is about 20 percent, but we think it’s more like half the population of those between eighteen and twenty-five.”

And on an official trip through the countryside, Kaitlin observes:

We met with American workers at an oil-processing facility close to Oran. They gave us hard hats to walk around the plant and told us they felt safe enough, that they trusted the Algerians to guard them from the beginnings of terrorism. After all, the Algerians had to have the oil. . . oil was Algeria’s main source of revenue. The country had neglected its agriculture for decades in pursuit of the black gold the world so craved.

For more on Algeria, see the country page on this site.

 

 

Bring Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses . .

 

Regardless of which political party won which offices in the recent election, immigration issues will no doubt be a part of congressional consideration in the next few years.

As a consular officer working for the U.S. State Department, I interviewed foreign nationals for both temporary visas and visas for permanent residence in the United States. Interviews for legal immigration were rewarding, often dealing with those who were elated at reaching their dream of living in the United States. These immigrants often had family who had immigrated to the United States before them. Others had earned their visas because their job skills were needed by an American employer.

In contrast, my interviews of those applying for temporary visits to the States exhausted me and the other U.S. visa officers. We knew that a significant percentage of the applicants hoped to use the temporary process to gain entry to the U.S. and then remain there, legally or illegally. We sometimes had to interview hundreds of applicants each day. The vast numbers required us to decide within minutes what were the intentions of the person before us. No wonder we were exhausted.

I found visa work to be not only exhausting but depressing. I disliked having the power to destroy people’s dreams, people who wanted nothing more than to escape often oppressive and/or poverty-stricken situations. These feelings found their way into the lives of two visa interviewers in my novels, Kaitlin in A Sense of Mission and Hannah in Searching for Home.

No immigration law will be perfect. More people still want to live in the United States than we can possibly accommodate. Web sites can aid us in making rational decisions about our immigration policies. You might begin with the Department of Homeland Security.

 

Murdered, A Foreigner Working for the United States

 

Qassim Aklan, local employee of the U.S. embassy in Sana’a, Yemen, was recently murdered. Aklan, an employee of the embassy for eleven years, aided his American colleagues in investigations that the embassy carried out.

About 53,000 local employees help staff U.S. embassies and consulates  abroad. The mere fact that they work for the United States sometimes puts them in danger. Over the years, hundreds have been killed because of their employment.

Every American who has worked in a U.S. embassy or consulate and earned any accolades knows how much of the praise is due to the local staff who made their work possible. I especially remember the three Foreign Service Nationals (as we called them then) who shepherded me through my exhausting first tour. No way could I have survived that tour without them.

Perhaps in tribute, two of my novels feature locally hired staff who work in U.S. embassies where the American protagonists are assigned. Lavali, Farid, and Ramelon are the fictitious national employees from A Sense of Mission. They support newbie U.S. Foreign Service Officer Kaitlin Sadler. She depends on the trio as she struggles to master the interviews of a never ending line of applicants for U.S. visas, endures a Middle Eastern war, and falls in love.

Hatem Lakhdar, at another Middle Eastern embassy, provides Patrick Holtzman, ambitious U.S. political officer in Searching for Home, with the names of valuable contacts. One contact becomes a special friend. Later Hatem offers sympathy to Patrick when the contact is murdered.

The American officers come and go when their tours end. When posts become too dangerous, they are evacuated. The Foreign Service Nationals remain, sometimes with tragic consequences.

 

What Is Global Fiction?

 

I fancy I still hear the call to prayer from the mosque beside the U.S. embassy compound, though I’m a grown woman now.

In the opening scene to my novel A Sense of Mission, the young protagonist, Kaitlin, the daughter of U.S. diplomats in a Muslim majority country, is wakened by the Islamic call to prayer. Her family is Christian. Her mother points out that the faithfulness of Muslims to their prayers might shame some Christians who rarely pray. She suggests that Kaitlin be reminded to pray to Jesus by the call to prayer.

That idea was one I carried out when I lived in the Middle East and heard the Muslim call to prayer five times each day. I decided to use it as a reminder to practice my Christian devotions. It was a reminder that an effective Christian life requires an active prayer life.

Many of us grew up in a country greatly influenced by the teachings of Christianity. We are only now understanding that those of us who call ourselves Christians actually are a minority in the world, about a third according to most counts. Lives immersed in the Internet and virtual communities remind us that we do indeed live in a global village. The increasing presence of other religions, or of no religion, jolts us.

The years I spent in foreign countries influenced me to write what I call “fiction for the global Christian,” to suggest the examination of life from a global viewpoint. Characters in such fiction struggle with personal faith issues, they fall in love, and they deal with family problems as in other fiction. In the midst of these conflicts, however, they understand Christianity as Jesus-centered for the whole world rather than centered exclusively on domestic American issues.

Other examples of global fiction include: When the Lion Roars by DiAnn Mills; Allah’s Fire by Chuck Holton and Gayle Roper; and Lion of Babylon by Davis Bunn.

 

How Did Our Exciting Story Become so Irrelevant To So Many?

 

Following is a scene from my novel A Sense of Mission. The scene follows an unsuccessful attempt to find a church home by three Christians:

We headed to a nearby Greek restaurant and took a table in the back to avoid standing out in our good clothes.

“So?” Ethan said, after we had ordered.

Matilda sighed and unfolded her napkin.

I said, “It’s amazing. All these high rises around. Lots more people, probably, than when the church was in the middle of a suburb, but the church seems to be dying.”

Matilda moved to one side to allow the server to fill her water glass. “I guess they’re doing their best to meet the needs of a changing neighborhood. Did you see the signs for two other groups that meet in the church? One Spanish, I think, not sure about the other.”

“Vietnamese,” said Ethan. “But one group seems almost totally absent, even though it’s probably the largest one in the neighborhood.”

“You mean the middle-class professionals enjoying a leisurely Sunday morning in their apartments and condos?” I asked.

“Right. How come Christians can’t seem to reach this group?”

I shrugged. “Look at the building. It fit fine with the architecture of the single-family suburb. Now it reminds me of those European cathedrals—kind of a dinosaur as far as relevance to the way people live today.”

“But why isn’t it relevant anymore?” Ethan asked. “That’s why the people don’t come now—the church doesn’t seem relevant to them. For the most part, they aren’t atheists or hostile to the church. They’re just indifferent to it. How did our exciting story become so irrelevant to so many?”

Eventually, Ethan answers his own question: “Christ isn’t tame, is he? He doesn’t wait in a box for us to open it on Sunday mornings. If you find where that Christ is, let me know. It’ll be scary, but I want that.”

Where does that Christ dwell, personified as Aslan in the Narnia tales as “not a tame lion”? What are the characteristics of a Christian gathering, or a Christian life, with that Christ at its center?